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“My father was forced to become a folk healer”

“My father was forced to become a curandero (folk healer),” a woman unexpectedly told me last week when we were talking about the history of the Hispanic community in Colorado. And she immediately proceeded to explain how that happened.

According to Teresa, during her childhood in the 1950’s in northern Colorado, Hispanics (a term she doesn’t like) were mistreated to the point that even those families who have been in the area for several generations were denied access to health services.

For that reason, Teresa’s father taught himself how to read several languages (in addition to Spanish and English) so he could read medicine books to find the way to prevent and cure at least some diseases.

Teresa now holds an important position at a city north of Denver. She said her father read those books to find what kind of elements were included in different prescriptions and treatments. If those elements were not easily available in the area where they lived, he researched what other local elements he could use.

Teresa is thankful for the dedication of his father. Eventually, she graduated from college and even today she feels her father is still motivating her to provide help for new immigrants and for minorities.

However, six decades later, she still remembers the time when she couldn’t see a doctor and she was not allowed to speak Spanish just because she was who she was. And she still remember those times not because of any bitterness, but because, in her opinion, the current economic crisis has caused the re-emergence of many of those same attitudes.

Teresa told me that she is seeing almost on a daily basis how Latinos, both immigrants and citizens, are facing many of the same obstacles she faced as a child regarding access to services they have the right to access. Or sometimes they are invited to a meeting (for example, by business people) just to be left alone in a corner of the room.

Teresa is right and the cases she described are real at least in many other areas of Colorado and perhaps in the rest of the country. However, there is an obvious difference between Latinos in the mid-20th century and in the early 21st century: numbers.

Latinos represent now 16 percent of the 307 million people in the United States. That is, according to the Census, there are 50 million Latinos in this country. And the Census always undercounts Latinos.

In addition, and because of their numbers, Latinos enjoy now a political clout and an economic power they didn’t have in the 1950’s. Why then we are still facing many of the same problems we were facing 60 years ago?

Of the many answers to that complex question, I can just point out that perhaps we are still waiting to receive what we know we deserve: respect, rights, services, opportunities. But perhaps we need to do what Teresa’s father did. Perhaps it’s time to use our own intellectual ability, creativity, and tenacity.

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